Sometime, Ya Gotta Stop and Smell the Future.

Occasionally, Lance trips over phrases in his readings that stop him in his tracks. While brushing up on his Myers-Briggs Type Indicators for a retreat he was doing he came across this description of the Intuitive Type (vs. the Sensible Type) and the air went out of his lungs.

"The kind of language that inspires the Intuitive has no ring to the Sensible. The Intuitive finds appeal in the metaphor and enjoys vivid imagery. He often daydreams, reads poetry, enjoys fantasy and fiction, and can find the study of dreams fascinating. The intuitive acts as if he is an extraterrestrial, a space traveler engaged in explorations beyond the realities of the present and past. The possible is always in front of him, pulling on his imagination like a magnet. The future holds an attraction for the Intuitive which the past and the actual do not. But because his head is often in the clouds, the Intuitive can be subject to greater error about facts than the Sensible, who pays better attention to what is going on about him."

"For the Intuitive, life is around the bend, on the other side of the mountain, just beyond the curve of the horizon. He can speculate for hours about the possibilities. He operates in the future time, "sees around corners," and knows "out of the unconscious." The Intuitive sometimes finds complex ideas coming to him as a complete whole, unable to explain how he knew. These visions, intuitions, or hunches may show up in any realm - technology, sciences, mathematics, philosophy, the arts or one's social life." (Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types by David Keirsey & Marilyn Bates 1984)

Lance has long known he tests out quite reliably as an ENFP (Extrovert, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving) or as his staff knows, his M/B Prayer reads "Oh God, Help me to think of just one thing ...OH LOOK, A BIRD...at a time." That proclivity, for interrupting himself and others in mid thought with another thought, became the stuff of legend at his workplace driving his perfectly Sensible colleagues nuts. Not to say Lance couldn't play the Sensible himself. He had to in his position. One does what one must do to fulfill their responsibilities, but anyone looking closely would have detected a tic in his eye, and a palsy in his fingers as he struggled to restrain his Intuitive traits. mitigated

But out on the road now, his full Intuitive character, the one who "lives ahead of reality" and "looks around corners' or "just beyond the curve of the horizon," was unleashed. Perhaps these tendencies had been cloaked while at work (called the Adapted State) but out here on the road, that N (called the Natural State) developed into a full blown monster. And Lance isn't sure he wants to put it back into a box. Or even if he can.

So how can a nice extraterrestrial boy from tomorrow land slip inconspicuously back into his old job? He read on.

"The intuitive lives in anticipation. Whatever is can be better, or different, and is seen as only a way station. Consequently, intuitives often experience a vague sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness. They seemed somewhat bothered by reality, constantly looking toward possibilities of changing or improving the actual. The S (sensible) person depends on perspiration where the N person is more likely to depend upon inspiration."

Perspiration vs Inspiration. Going through his friends, family, and staff, Lance could slot most of them into one of these two words. And when he was done, he could validate the statement in the book that about 75% of the general population are Sensibles while only 25% are Intutitives. (Maybe in New England it was the Intuitives being burned as witches by the Sensibles...hey, I'm just sayin'...)

Now his life was making sense. Lance had felt that "vague sense of restlessness" and stuckness. It was one of the driving forces that pushed him out on the road. This past year he had run smack into the reality that The Dream was accomplished and the next horizon was still too dim to see. He had felt, more and more, the pain of perceiving things differently than the majority. He had watched his efforts at imagining new ways of doing business, of perceiving customers, of re-imagining the mission to include "all things creative in society" fall flat in a world of hardworking Sensibles who neither wanted nor embraced such radical ventures, especially in the midst of a recession, They were, of course, right for good and sensible reasons.

But Lance was growing weary of good and sensible reasons. He was weary of cold dreams and old adversaries who would rather fight over an extra parking space than come together to birth a new program. There was a very dear price he paid in his soul for living in a competitive environment where the bottom line and tomorrow's sales were the primary benchmarks of success, not inspiration. Where who has the idea was more important than the idea itself. Where no one, especially Lance, had time to listen, only time to talk.

Oxygen for the mind was what he sought. And when he had enough miles behind him and enough open sky ahead, he could literally breathe better. On the road, it was never about sights to see, only about insights he could see. It was never about speaking, but always about listening. It was all about where Lance could go, not where he couldn't.

Sometimes, you gotta stop and smell...the future. Maybe that is what Lance does best.